What Are We Made Of? A Study Of The Very Basic
Ingredients Of Matter And Energy

Dr. Kevin Giovanetti,
Professor of Physics

Monday 1:00-3:00

Sept. 12, 19, 26, Oct. 3, 10

Dr G will take this opportunity to
try and explain some of the interesting ideas developed over the past 100 years
to explain the strange world of sub atomic physics.What scientists have discovered is that the
world that we live in seems to offer us a limited set of experiences on which
to base our scientific intuition. When one tries to establish the rules for
small scale behavior or high speed reactions our intuition fails. Classical
physics has a remarkable track record. It explains so much of what we see.It completely fails, however, when applied to
atoms unless we add some relationships that continue to create queasy feelings
when first examined by scientist.We
will spend time thinking and discussing some of these ideas.

After several weeks of discussion
I would like to remind students that these topics are not easy to understand.
There are numerous pedagogical books, articles, panels and discussions on these
topics.I have not found anyone who
thinks these topics are simple. There are indeed many scientists that struggle
with the meaning of these ideas and discussions often erupt in journals that
revisit the core ideas of Quantum Mechanics and Relativity.This weekend I enjoyed reading a book “Simply
Einstein”. It attempts to demystify the ideas of Einstein and covers in a very
nice way some of the topics we discussed in class.